The Chautauquan, Vol. 03, December 1882: A Monthly Magazine Devoted to the Promotion of True Culture.; Organ of the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific CircleChautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle
Religion
The Chautauquan, Vol. 03, December 1882: A Monthly Magazine Devoted to the Promotion of True Culture.; Organ of the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle
Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle
Chautauqua Institution -- Periodicals; Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle -- Periodicals
In addition to the sources of pollution of the atmosphere which we
have been considering, there are various trades and manufactures in
which poisonous matters are given off. Some of these are of an organic
nature, as in the melting of fats, in the making of size and glue,
in the boiling of oil, in the boiling of bones, and in many other
processes carried out on a considerable scale, where the emanations
are highly offensive and often of unknown chemical composition. Gas
works must be included in this poisonous group, owing to the accidental
escape of gas, sometimes in large quantity. In lime kilns enormous
volumes of carbonic acid gas are poured out, both from the limestone
burnt and from the fuel employed, and in this way persons living in
the immediate neighborhood have been suffocated. In chloride of lime
(bleaching powder) manufactories, and in places where it is used for
bleaching wool and other materials, chlorine gas is given off into
the air, causing when inhaled a great amount of irritation in the air
passages. Moreover, this chlorine vapor is often carried in the air for
long distances. In other branches of industry the workers are exposed
to the vapors of sulphurous acid and muriatic acid, both of these being
very irritating, and giving rise to various diseases of the lungs and
eyes.
Such, then, are a few of the impurities, more or less poisonous, to
be met with in the air we breathe; and dangerous to health as all of
them are, it must be admitted that they do far less mischief to the
public health than the continual mismanagement of our atmospheric food,
common in all classes of society, by which it is rendered unfit to
support a healthy life. The two ways in which air may be rendered thus
comparatively valueless are either by excluding it too much from our
dwellings, and this is the fault of the rich, or by crowding too many
people together in small rooms, and this is the fault of the poor. In
the houses of the better classes the air is kept out by closed windows,
doors, curtains, and even in some places by putting screens before the
fire-places in summer, and in bedrooms in winter when fire is not used.
Pure air is, in fact, the most important of all health factors. When
it is breathed freely, plentifully, and continually, there are few
diseases which it will not enable the body to resist. Nay, even some
injuries, which, received by the denizens of the overcrowded city,
would be speedily followed by death, will be readily recovered from
by the agricultural laborer or country farmer, who, always breathing
a pure atmosphere, has thus stored up a great amount of additional
constitutional force.—_Good Words._
MANNER.
By LORD CHESTERFIELD to his Son.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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